


stuck and poked

by Chromathesia



Series: fh fics by chrom [4]
Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series), Fantasy High
Genre: Childhood Trauma, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Implied Neglect, Mild Spoilers for FH:SY, adaine and aelwyn breaking and reconciling, cw: needle mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-13 18:00:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28907463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chromathesia/pseuds/Chromathesia
Summary: For as long as Adaine has known her (as in, all her life), Aelwyn has always been there to mark her in some new indelible way.
Relationships: Adaine Abernant & Aelwyn Abernant
Series: fh fics by chrom [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1782916
Comments: 5
Kudos: 31





	stuck and poked

**Author's Note:**

> gonna be real with you, this has been sitting in my files for a few months now, lol. 
> 
> Adaine and Aelwyn are desi in this story.

**_1\. queen aelwyn abernant_ **

Where Aelwyn found a sharpie from, Adaine doesn’t know. She hadn’t even noticed the pen in her sister’s hand; she had been buried in a book, pouring over the elven runes that refused to imprint themselves into her brain and hoping that just one more reread would help. 

“Are you  _ still _ working on runes, Adaine?” Adaine briefly mourns how Aelwyn won’t call her Addy anymore. (or, she approximates mourning) (she’s only three years old) (Aelwyn is all of five) (neither of them have learned what true grief is yet) (but there’s a twinge in her chest and the echo of a smack on her hand from when she asked Aelwyn why she had killed the nickname) (it takes Adaine years and years before she hears it again, she is a woman grown by then) (but this is not then) (this is now) (and right now she is three and her sister is five and they are sitting on their mother’s couch)

“They’re hard,” Adaine says, and she feels her bottom lip quivering a bit but tries to stop it. “How did you learn them?”

Aelwyn seems to ponder her query. “I don’t know,” she says, all proper diction and enunciation. “But maybe I could help you?”

Adaine’s eyes widen and she nods fervently at this rare extended olive branch.

“Good! Close that book and hold your hand out,” Aelwyn instructs.

Adaine puts the book aside but hesitates to follow the second order. “What’re you gonna do?” she asks.

Aelwyn sighs. “I’m going to  _ help you _ ,” she emphasizes, and Adaine sees the marker her sister is wielding now. Uncertainly, Adaine extends a hand. Aelwyn quickly snatches her wrist and lays it flat against her thigh.

“Okay, so those baby books will tell you the letters’ order, but it won’t tell you how to read them because it wants you to learn the letters first. What  _ we’re  _ gonna do is practice the letters out of order so that you can get used to reading them,” she says imperiously. She brandishes the sharpie like a magic wand or a dagger and carefully draws a series of symbols that Adaine recognizes but doesn’t know very well.

“So, let’s go through, one by one,” Aelwyn says. She points to the first one. “This is a Q. It’s almost always followed up with a U. Then, there are two E’s, and an N. Do you know what that spells?”

The afternoon is wasted away with Aelwyn instructing Adaine on each individual letter she drew onto Adaine’s hand, the cool ink wisping away into a dry layer that she feels more than sees. Adaine doesn’t learn to read in one day, though, and she thinks nothing of it when she joins her family at dinner.

“Adaine, what is that horrid scribble on your arm?” her mother asks her.

“Aelwyn was helping me learn how to read,” she says softly, paused with a pinch of rice in her hands.

Her mother’s eyes narrow and she wants to disappear behind the dark curly curtain that is her hair. “Wash that off before dinner next time, Adaine,” she says. (her mother does not chastise Aelwyn for drawing on her)

Throughout dinner, Adaine rubs at her hand, wondering deep down if she could maybe rub away the bold “QUEEN AELWYN ABERNANT” off along with the shame of her mother’s disapproval.

  
  
**_2\. calloused_ **

Adaine passes by an ornate glass vase filled with beautiful spring blooms transmuted into crystal on her way to the bathroom. Her knees are sore. Her ankles are sore. Her shoulders are sore. Her fingers tingle.

When she leaves, her father is walking by. “Adaine, I was wondering why I couldn’t hear anything,” he says idly, examining the flowers himself. “Such a kind gift from your aunt, isn’t it? I’m sure your recital will go just as well.” (she is not old enough yet to hear the subtle threat of his words)

“Yes, Father,” she says quietly. Her father watches her walk down the hall, the half-shuffle of her slippered feet as only sound puncturing their mutual silence.

“Stand up straight, Adaine,” he calls out before she turns back into the living room where she was practicing. “You’ll fall down if you play slouched over like that. Every little bit helps.”

“Yes, Father,” she says dutifully, nowhere near as loud as him to avoid his admonishments to keep her voice down when inside.

Perhaps in a different lifetime, Adaine would adore her violin. It is a fine instrument, of course, magically enchanted to perfectly fit her while she grew up. Her parents had stressed to her that since she wanted to play violin (she’d wanted to play cello), they would get her the best of the best, the most perfect equipment so that she could weave her own beautiful music. Just music, though; as much as music itself was magic, Adaine could not imagine her parents’ reactions if she ended up a bard.

The concerto she is practicing is one that she’s only heard grown adults play, which means that she has to play as well as an adult. She hasn’t told her parents her doubts, how she preferred a movement from an unaccompanied suite, how the concerto demanded so much from her fingers and how sometimes all she could do was wrap bandages around her fingers and hope that they healed by morning. (they always did) (it disappoints and relieves her that they do) (otherwise she wouldn’t be able to practice) (and what would that turn into?)

Adaine flexes her fingers and examines the parallel lines struck into her flesh from the hours of playing she’s already done today. Her fingers collapse on themselves, but she cannot stop. She has to be good. She has to earn her crystal bouquet so that it can be put in a pretty glass vase next to Aelwyn’s in the hallway and then they’ll shine together, just like they were meant to. She had heard Aelwyn practicing late into the night the week before her recital, had heard a discordant slam of keys that signified that her sister had flopped onto the piano to take a moment of rest before beginning to practice her sonata again. If Aelwyn could do it, so could Adaine. (she could just bandage herself up later)

When it comes time for the recital, Adaine doesn’t quite see the world. She slips into a state where she is not the one playing but she is watching her fingers play and marveling at how her body moves and she is hearing her music and for perhaps one of the first times in her life, she is not thinking about how Aelwyn might think.

It’s her sister that comes up to her with the bouquet of cut glass and hands them over so sweetly and lets her fumble with both holding her instrument and these flowers, and her parents aren’t exactly  _ proud  _ of her but they aren’t  _ disappointed _ and the bouquet joins Aelwyn’s until they’ve earned new ones three months later. 

Adaine daydreams about quitting violin one day, about regaining feeling in those stripes that are scored into her fingertips.

(the callouses take years for Adaine to get used to) (they never really go away)

  
  
**_3\. uruz-othala_ **

After her sophomore year spring break, Adaine wants to do nothing more than lie in her bed for days and days and days on end. The notion that she has saved the world twice before learning how to drive a car is overwhelming in that dead, horrid way that makes her think she’s getting used to it. She wonders how the world will end in her junior year. She doesn’t doubt it will in some twisted way that she could never conceive of.

It’s strange to have friends that would and have died for you. Her non-Jawbone therapist tells her that her depression has exacerbated and the reminder that she has depression reminds her that she has yet to apologize to Fabian for what she said in Leviathan. Really, she has yet to do anything that acknowledges the longest two weeks of her life, but this is  _ important  _ and Fabian is  _ important  _ and he needs to know that he is. The draft of the text she planned to send him has been sitting in her phone since they got back and she knows she has to send it but seeing it in her phone makes her almost hyperventilate and--

“Adaine? Can I see your hand for a second?”

She looks over and Aelwyn has turned from where she sits at her desk and is looking at her. 

“Why?” Adaine’s voice grumbles from lack of use. Aelwyn’s expression breaks into something that could be concern before sharpening back to neutrality.

“Mine are rather filled up now, aren’t they?” she says, and Adaine finally sees the drying henna on Aelwyn’s hands.

She had noted Aelwyn’s newest obsession; it was hard to avoid someone’s interests when you shared a room. She had noticed that when Aelwyn lightened her roots every couple months or so, she would wait for the bleach and toner to sit while mixing up the thick paste and carefully piping it all over her hands in patterns that begged to be intricate despite shaking hands and the frustration-sketched lines across her face.

Adaine must be staring because Aelwyn starts fidgeting before turning completely around. “Now, it won’t do for you to spend another second in bed, Adaine,” she practically growls, getting up and walking to their bunk bed. Adaine only has a second to gape at her older sister before Aelwyn efficiently hoists her up.

“Aelwyn, let go of me,” she says, trying to free herself from her sister’s grip.

“Absolutely not. I am tired of you moping about in bed,” Aelwyn says in a clipped tone. “Now sit down. I want to try and see if I can do something specific, and I’ve run out of room on my hands.”

Adaine gives her a glare but there’s not much else she can do besides crawl back in bed so she drags her chair over and sits next to Aelwyn’s desk. Her sister gracefully ignores her glare and picks up her applicators (a foil cone, a small-headed paintbrush) and bends over Adaine’s extended right hand.

The mehndi paste is cool against Adaine’s skin and she shivers slightly but doesn’t twitch away, as she might have once as a child (years of sitting still are hard to unlearn). She glances down a few minutes later to see shaky lines carving out distinct shapes on the back of her hand and she cannot resist asking, “Aelwyn, what are you drawing?”

Her sister doesn’t bite back at her like she once would have. “Some runes I read up on,” she says, sounding distracted. “The book said-- gods, why isn’t this mix consistent?-- it said that using these runes in combination would serve best to hold the arcane energy-- don’t look at me like that Adaine, I’m not using you as my magical guinea pig or anything, I’m just practicing for now.”

Adaine swallows back the snide comments about how trusting Aelwyn is as hard as it is new and looks at the shaky lines that meet in neat, sharp angles on the back of her right hand. “What do they mean?”

Aelwyn puts the conical applicator down before picking up the brush and dabbing at lines to straighten them, neaten them up, clean up their mess. “This one is for family, according to the book,” she mumbles as though embarrassed, “and this one is for protection.”

Something thicker than sarcasm is stuck in Adaine’s throat now, and in the weeks following she stares at the parallel lines that disguise the meaning of Aelwyn’s art, trying to read it again. She remembers aunts at weddings with the concentric circles and radiant lines that now adorn her hand-- is this why cousins used to quietly long for intricate red-brown circles for their weddings?

When the Bad Kids ask about what is drawn on her hand, for the first time, she tells them, “You wouldn’t understand,” and refuses to explain how precious those marks are.

  
  
  


_**4\. shielded** _

Aelwyn’s hands stop shaking close to the end of Adaine’s sophomore year and her designs become more intricate with each passing day. Adaine could begrudge Aelwyn her success all she wanted, but Aelwyn had always had more determination than talent and had insisted on excelling at everything she set her mind to. This next interest just happened to be mehndi, it seemed. While Adaine read her textbook and tried to harness her oracular abilities for herself, Aelwyn would grab her hand, flatten it on the table they were both sitting at, and carefully apply lines, circles, concentric patterns that wrapped around Adaine’s fingers and sat on her palms.

Adaine had no reason to question her sister, even when she noticed the mehndi powder looking distinctly aqua and glowing slightly. Aelwyn had liked to experiment in the past, and Adaine had always been her test subject. There was no reason to doubt that it was the same way now. Sometimes Adaine pushed off trancing to look at how those lines glowed against her palm.

Mx. Runestaff, the wizardry teacher at Aguefort, had no problem with Adaine finishing off her year with independent study (they were an evocation wizard who hadn’t the slightest on how to help a divination student and encouraged Adaine to look into mentors who would help her harness her gifts) but occasionally would ask Adaine to take part in some in-class demonstrations. 

Today happens to be one such demonstration: Adaine looks over to the half-elf that stands opposite to her and sighs slightly. She sees the arrogance in his pose, the confidence in the way he raises a hand. He’s a conjuration wizard, if she remembers correctly, and he does not scare her in the slightest.

“Stick to first-level spells, please!” Mx. Runestaff barks out. “Keep it clean. Don’t want to make Yolanda clean up too much of your mess. We’re going to go to three rounds before concluding and analyzing.” They clap loudly to signal the start of initiative.

The other wizard gets the jump on Adaine, because of  _ course  _ he does, and he immediately flicks his wrist towards her to send three pinpricks of light rocketing towards her. Two of them veer off-course as she darts to a side, but the third happens to be racing towards where she dodges and she hisses as it sears a cut into her leg. Adaine quickly raises a layer of Mage Armor on herself (not a move she normally goes for, but her friends aren’t here to be physical shields and she might as well force her opponent to think more precisely) and sinks into a crouch, balancing on the balls of her feet the way she sees Riz do right before he darts into a shadow. The half-elf (she really should remember her classmates’ names) sneers at her move before cracking his fingers and sending another bout of Magic Missile towards her. Already Adaine’s hands are moving to guide her inner arcane energy into Tasha’s Hideous Laughter, the command words at the tip of her tongue, but she has just enough time to instinctively slap a hand towards the one Missile that managed to hone in on her.

When she does, something on her hand glows a violent aqua green (her magic had never manifested in that sort of light) before a grid echoes over it and parries the Missile back towards her foe. The boy’s eyes widen and he screeches in disbelief as he backs away hastily from his own attack driven against him, and he is distracted when Adaine flicks a handful of ice-blue energy towards him that turns into an arcane web that wraps around his middle. His eyes bug for a second before he bursts into a fit of hysterical laughter right before his own attack connects. Adaine would normally be concerned (what strange arcane prowess had taken over her body?), but when she looks up all she can see is a towering red dragon and a figure with a crackling skull mask and her heart is racing, she cannot hear anything, and her mouth moves to shout out the summon for Ray of Sickness. She gathers her inner arcane energy around a pointer finger, pauses to let the typically-divinatory magic turn necromantic, and points to the half-elf still bent over and gasping for air.

A jolt of purple energy (Counterspell, Adaine instantly recognizes) hisses out, nullifying the Ray of Sickness, and Adaine blinks and suddenly she is back in her classroom and her hand feels like it’s going to bruise. When she looks down, she notices that part of the pattern that Aelwyn had drawn on her was already fading, as though she had it for a couple of weeks rather than a couple of days.

“Miss Abernant, that was a very interesting technique you utilized halfway through that match,” Mx. Runestaff says over the murmurs of Adaine’s fellow wizard classmates. “Could you explain to us what that might have been?”

Adaine blinks. “Ah, well,” she stutters slightly, feeling a tiny wave of panic wash over her heart, “I was thinking to cast the Shield spell, but I think something else happened. I don’t know really what, but. That’s not how Shield looks, right?”

“Right you are, Miss Abernant,” her teacher says, eyes shining slightly. “If you do figure it out, please enlighten me. Fascinating things seem to happen to and around you, Adaine, and I for one am very intrigued.”

Aelwyn walks into the kitchen halfway through Adaine’s account of the match to an interested Sandralynn and the strange spell she didn’t recognize, a Shield spell turned offensive. “Oh, it worked, then?” she asks with the mundaneness of asking if it was raining outside.

Adaine felt her jaw drop. “That was you?” 

Aelwyn gestures to Adaine’s hand with a mug she pulls out of a cupboard. “It was a simple test. I just wanted to see if I could set up a ritual spell in temporary inks,” she says casually. She stands next to a kettle, waiting for the water to boil.

“And you couldn’t just tell me?” Adaine asks, feeling her temper return.

“Of course not. That’s not how one conducts a double-blind study, Adaine,” Aelwyn says, a drop of her former condescension making its way into her tone.

“You wouldn’t know if I would be a valid test subject in a true double-blind study, Aelwyn,” Adaine grumbles under her breath. 

Aelwyn doesn’t respond, merely taking another mug out of the cupboard and offering it to Adaine, pointing at the whistling kettle. Adaine lets herself glare at her sister for one second longer before accepting it. “Also, Shield isn’t a ritual spell,” Adaine says.

“It wasn’t Shield, it was Volley, and before you ask, yes, I wrote the spell, too. Sugar? Milk? Lemon?”

  
  
  


**_5\. adaine’s furious fist_ **

“Adaine, do you trust me?”

Adaine studies Aelwyn. It’s the summer after sophomore year and it’s only been a few months since they had reconciled, but there is something in Aelwyn’s eyes that seems to imitate earnesty.

“It depends,” she says, a compromise between her sixteen years of experience with Aelwyn’s cruelties and her recently acquired respect for her sister.

Aelwyn winces slightly. “Fair.”

Adaine looks at her for one second longer. “What did you want?” 

Aelwyn says nothing, merely pushing a piece of paper over to her. Drawn on the paper is a diagram of a runic circle. Adaine’s nowhere near as practiced with runes as her sister is but she recognizes the main sigils. How could she not? They translate to “Furious Fist”.

“Aelwyn, what is this?” she whispers, her throat suddenly dry.

Aelwyn clears her own throat. “Well, you are quite a fan of that ghastly spell that Ayda wrote for you,” she says, her tone clipped. “And you use it quite often despite its bloodied history. I thought you might be interested in a, well, more permanent, self-restoring version of it that would expend the arcane energy that may normally simply dissipate. It’s a melding of wizardry and basic physics; surely you would know that if you read my notes.” The acidity that Adaine normally hears in her voice is strangely absent.

“You said permanent? Does that have anything to do with whatever you and Sam were working on the other day?”

Aelwyn nods. “We’ve been looking into creating an ink that would function like the spell mehndi I tested on you a few months ago, but more liquid, something that could be injected into the skin. The downside is that to ensure it’s balanced it has to be applied by hand rather than with an instrument or with magic.” It seems like she has more to say but doesn’t know how to say it. Adaine knows the feeling.

“So you’d have to stick and poke me?”

“I believe the correct term is hand-poke,” Aelwyn says.

Adaine sighs. “Well, let’s start, then.”

It takes the rest of the afternoon for Aelwyn to sketch out the runic circle to the level of precision that she is satisfied with and carefully replicate it with a tattoo needle wrapped in athletic tape (most likely stolen from Ragh). Adaine watches the symbol slowly form on her palm in pinpricks of discomfort, the teal pattern radiating outwards from a single grounding rune. 

An hour after the sun goes down, Aelwyn finally sighs, puts the needle down, and stretches her hand. “I think that should work. Could you test it?”

Adaine stands up and looks at the still stinging tattoo on her hand. She closes her eyes, feeling how her magic lingers on her skin lazily, before focusing on the runic circle. She feels it ebb and flow and begin to gather around her hand and when she opens her eyes her hand is glowing that familiar light blue mixed in with the teal and when she swings her fist in front of her, the magic smoothly moves forward before connecting with her desk and breaking it in half.

“Oh, dear Cassandra,” Adaine says, jumping at the desk’s crack. She hears feet pounding up the stairs and quickly twists her fingers into Mending, sewing the desk back together just in time to see Fig and Kristen and Tracker and Sandralynn throw the door open, eyes wide and panicked. Aelwyn swiftly balls the paper with the arcane circle on it up and throws it over her shoulder.

“Is….everything alright?” Sandralynn ventures. “We weren’t sure what that noise meant, and the girls wanted to check in on you all.”

“Everything is fine, Miss Faeth,” Aelwyn says, her cool politeness-bordering-smugness coloring her voice. The circle on Adaine’s palm pulses with her heartbeat. “Adaine wanted my assistance on her homework, and of course because of my own proficiency with wizardry, I am the most equipped to help her in this manor. The tutoring merely got a bit out of hand. It’s under control.” Adaine winces at Aelwyn’s dismissive tone.

Sandralynn is visibly taken aback but merely ushers the other girls out of her room (Fig looks at her with curiosity, Kristen with concern). There is a beat of silence.

“It regains its energy while you trance,” Aelwyn mutters almost under her breath. When Adaine turns to look at her she’s smoothing out the crumpled paper under her palms. She can feel magic thrumming in the fresh tattoo, a testament to her friendship with Ayda permanently embedded into her skin by a sister she did not trust just two seasons prior.

“Thank you.” 

Aelwyn is silent in the wake of Adaine’s gratitude.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [Twitter](https://www.twitter.com/chromathesia) and 


End file.
